I started to consider the direction I want to engage in the animation industry while working on my graduation film. This consideration also pushes me to understand and realise my strengths and weaknesses. In this course, I have explored and researched a wide variety of creative areas — from illustration and concept art to 2D animation. Although I acquired lots of different skills, I am still confused about how to position myself professionally.

I have explored what I would like to do after leaving this course in the last term, but I changed my direction after I experienced more projects. Because I learned more skills, and I gradually found my exact strength in animation production.

My original plan after graduation is to be a character designer, but when I review my previous works, I realised that my character design skills are not really competitive enough to get a job in the industry.

There are the character designs from my last project, I thought my designs were average and common. Compared with the brilliant character designs from other artists, I realised my designs are not good enough to draw attention from the huge amount the good applications in this field if I want to get a job.

I chose to as a character designer after graduation because I did not have enough confidence that I could finish my animation perfectly in the past. However, I got lots of positive feedback from my previous project, I gradually realised that maybe I can explore and develop my animation skills.

The preparation of my graduation project allowed me to have more opportunities to further explore and research what is the area I am truly passionate about. I found that I am always enjoying focusing on character performance, including capturing emotion change, and designing movement based on the character’s personality. I specifically have a strong passion for creating exaggerated animation styles, for example, when a character moves, their faces stretch and squeeze largely.

Thanks to the director for giving me a lot of flexibility to design the ghost performances and facial expressions, I was enjoying when I drew each part in terms of ghosts. I’m finally sure what ambition in the future I want to focus on and what I can do to improve my skills to help me get a job after graduation.

In conclusion, I will try to make a showreel and a personal website to display my skills in animation to find a job soon. I understood have lots of details I need to focus on and care about when I build the website and make a showreel after I attended the tutorial. I will continue to explore my character animation skills and create my CV at the same time. At this moment, I only wanted to put all my effort into the graduation film, because I plan to edit the graduation film into my showreel. So I hope I can do my best in my graduation project.